Th ree lines of evidence: handedness, brain anatomy and cognition in great apes, extinct hominids and modern humans suggest that cerebral lateralisation underlies the human capacity for language. Chimpanzees do not show consistent population level handedness. Cultural artefacts and post-cranial anatomy allow some investigation of cerebral asymmetry and handedness in extinct hominids suggesting ...

Individuals who consistently use their dominant hand for most tasks exhibit poorer memory than individuals whose handedness is relatively inconsistent, but consistent-handers' memory can be enhanced by making repetitive saccadic eye movements before attempting retrieval. One account of these effects is that inconsistent handedness and saccade execution are associated with increased interhemisph...

The arrangement of photoreceptors in the ommatidia of the Drosophila compound eye is polarized, having a handedness or chirality. Notch signalling helps determine this handedness, first by establishing a signalling center at the eye equator, and second by mediating a choice between two photoreceptor fates

Researchers have long been interested in the relationship between handedness and language in development. However, traditional handedness studies using single age groups, small samples, or too few measurement time points have not capitalized on individual variability and may have masked 2 recently identified patterns in infants: those with a consistent hand-use preference and those with an inco...

According to the Geschwind-Behan-Galaburda (GBG) hypothesis, prenatal testosterone (T) causes a slowing in the development of the left brain with a consequent compensatory growth in the right brain, creating a reverse organisation of the cerebral lateralisation. That is, left- and right-handedness might be associated with high and low prenatal T levels, respectively. To test this hypothesis, th...